Snapshot reports provide a simple way to see essential information about the business. The idea behind snapshot reports is simple: Snapshot reports are designed to give managers quick “snapshots” of jobs, costs, billings, and financial information that are easy to print without programming.

Production
Production reports show status, traffic and schedules from jobs and tasks. It's
the only way to get job status lists, traffic reports, and job schedules for all of your jobs in production.

Work In Progress
Work in Progress reports compare estimates, costs, open purchase orders, and
unbilled costs from jobs and clients.

Job Costs
Job Costs reports summarize purchases, time,
expenses, and checks by job, task, or client -- every cost
you've incurred for a week, month, or any period by client,
job, or task.

Vendor Account Aging
These reports show unpaid invoices
from A/P. You can see unpaid invoices in detail, or just
see each vendor's balance due. The vendor aging can be run
as of the current date or through any prior period.

Client Account Aging
Client Account Aging reports show unpaid
invoices from Accounts Receivable. You can see each unpaid
invoice, or just the total balance due for each client.

Cash>Flash
The Cash Flash window shows your current cash balance and outstanding
A/P and A/R balances. A schedule of payments and cash receipts
can be set up to help you plan your cash needs.

Profitability
Profitability reports show profit and loss from jobs and tasks. You can
analyze the job's profit to date, or just profit earned for
the month's billings and costs.

Productivity
Productivity reports show how time was spent from Time Sheets. You can
quickly see how your staff is utilizing their time by client,
department or profit center -- for a week, a month, or any
period of time.

Financials
This encompasses the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance,
Detailed General Ledger, and Statement of Cash Flows. You
can print financials anytime during the month, seeing your
up-to-the-minute balances.

Media Analysis
Media Analysis reports can be used by media buyers and account service
to see how advertising was purchased. Account management can use media
analysis reports to analyze how well the media department is managing themselves.

Productivity reports
can help you balance the work load. If one staff member is consistently
logging more hours than other staff, you'll see it in their
total hours. You can use this information to move work around,
so that everyone is working more efficiently.

Cost-based WIP reports
literally show you which costs are unbilled.
This option gives you the most detailed look at unbilled costs,
which then become the basis for your WIP accrual entries.
However, it's more complicated to track WIP by cost than it is by task.

You can mark vendors "inactive"
in the Vendor window. Choose Setup > Vendors, then choose Edit > Edit > Vendor.
Uncheck the Active checkbox, and click Save. Do this for
each vendor that is no longer active. Then, when you open
the Vendor lookup list (Lookup > Vendors), the list will pull only active vendors.

Job Scheduling
Like estimates, schedules are not created independently
of jobs. Instead schedules are based on a job's tasks.
In this example, we'll create a "ballpark" schedule, then
we'll fine-tune the job schedule for the staff's production reports.

Traffic
Traffic reports show jobs by status, including
important dates and times. In this lesson, our new job
will be given a "work in progress" status to add it
to the Daily Job Status and Weekly Traffic reports.

Tracking Time
Daily time keeping is important because it's the
only way to know how everyone in the shop spends their
time. If you bill for time and materials, it's critical
that everyone log their hours worked on jobs and tasks.
Without accurate time keeping you're giving your clients
free time.

It's easy to see what's due today.
It's easy for anyone in the shop to see what's due today.
Job tasks that are scheduled to be completed today appear
automatically in the Work to Do window -- just choose View > Work
to Do then click OK. They're easy to change, too. Double-clicking
on a task displays its production details, including specifications
that describe the work.

Missed deadlines? Not me!
Here's a different kind of traffic report: The Missed Deadlines
report concisely shows only those scheduled tasks whose
finished date is later than their due date. It's subtotals
overdue job tasks by staff member, giving production managers
the information they need to determine why some work is
finished late. Perhaps not enough time is being given
for staffers to complete the work? If so, the scheduler
can adjust the lead time on future work using this information.